


dependent on none and related to none

by PoorYorick



Series: Abgrundtief [1]
Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies), X-Men (Movieverse)
Genre: Angst and Feels, Charles likes being in control more than he likes hurting Erik, Charles' family was horrible, Consensual Violence, Dominance, Erik has Issues, Erik likes pain but isn't exactly submissive., Erik uses his mouth for that rather than talking, Erik's career as a Nazi-hunter, I'll update the warnings as I go along, Light Bondage, M/M, Masochism, Non-Linear Narrative, Oral Sex, Period-Typical Homophobia, Whipping, a lot of that honestly, pwp i guess, side plots are: Moira trying to wrap her head around the existence of mutants, they're dumb about this
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-02
Updated: 2019-07-02
Packaged: 2020-06-02 10:21:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19439488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PoorYorick/pseuds/PoorYorick
Summary: In his life, Charles had learnt to hide many things. His telepathy, his unnatural tendencies, the way he flinched at sudden movements or loud noises when he encountered his brother at any public event and was forced to sit by his side. But there was no hiding with Erik. None of the secrets - none of the lies - were necessary with him. Or possible. Charles was the telepath among the two of them but Erik had an uncanny ability to see right through any façade and any falsehood. Maybe that was why he bothered so rarely with pretence himself. Or maybe the man just had nothing to lose.------------------ Or: Charles tries to understand Erik. He doesn't. They have sex.





	dependent on none and related to none

**Author's Note:**

> (I took some liberties with the time-frame here, I like to think the squad stayed at Charles' Mansion much longer than is implied in the film. Several months even.)

_“I have love in me the likes of which you can scarcely imagine and rage the likes of which you would not believe. If I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other.” – Frankenstein, Mary Shelley_

Several pairs of hands grabbed Charles’ arms and yanked him out of the swirling, pitch-black water back onboard the small lifeboat where he was immediately wrapped into several blankets. The minds of the soldiers radiated just slightly less displeasure over the skinny Oxford professor who had just jumped ship to conduct what they considered the world’s most unprofessional rescue mission than relief over its success.

The man – Erik, his name was Erik – he had just saved from death by drowning was making a point to evade any helping hands and to climb into the small vessel without assistance. Charles felt a pang of Disbelief and then Fear enter the minds of the soldiers as they saw Erik magnetise his hands to the metal outside of the lifeboat and scale it like an insect.

Moira was the first to understand and Charles could feel her penny drop:

‘ _Another…mutant?’_

He telepathically reminded her of the image of the flying anchor that had crushed the ship as if it were made of cardboard and had neatly sliced off the upper decks with its chain.

_That was him._

Moira, who hadn’t known of the existence of mutants until a little over a week ago, looked over to the remains of the ship which were still floating on the surface of the sea. Her self-control was impressive. Her face didn’t betray any of the terror that flashed through her mind at the thought that the deaths of her soldiers and this display of destruction hadn’t been the result of man-made weapons but sheer will force of these… ‘ _people’_ , she forced herself to think and Charles heard it. ‘ _They are still people’._

And yet Charles could pick up on the undercurrent of her thoughts as well, the ideas and concerns that were just beginning to form and that would eventually cross her conscious mind once she sat down and contemplated the events of this night: There is an arms race, she would think, between the Soviets and us, but these weapons can be controlled and we can keep each other in check. We can maintain a balance.

We have nothing to keep a balance with these… ‘ _People_ ’.

Moira turned towards Erik, who had sat himself down as far away from any of the soldiers as the small confines of the boat allowed. His eyes were following every movement of every man and woman on board, the tension in his frame not much unlike a cornered animal. Charles could feel his electro-magnetic perception skim over the soldiers and pick up on every weapon they carried and every gold tooth and every screw inside their bodies.

“I am Moira MacTaggert with the CIA.” Moira held out her hand towards their new guest. Charles could feel her brain take in every single detail about the man sitting opposite to her with the same precision and military calculation that Erik had scrutinised the soldiers with.

Erik took her hand. “A pleasure to meet you. My name is Max Eisenhardt.”

Charles mind was buzzing. It was as if he was moving through a dream. It should have been a nightmare –he had seen people die tonight; from the force of tornados another mutant had created form his bare hands – but it was too surreal for that loss of human life to actually register in his heart just yet. (And what kind of person did that make of him?)

In his head, the same scenes were playing over and over again as he followed no less than four soldiers back onboard the ship and under deck where he accepted a set of dry clothes. (He was cold, Charles realised with distant concern. He was freezing cold.)

He had seen a ship getting torn to pieces by the force of a nature that was now standing beside him and was efficiently removing a wetsuit. And Charles had thrown himself from fifteen feet up into the ocean to save this man.

He knew that the adrenaline was still coursing through his veins. His entire body was ringing as if he had touched a live wire - he was probably brimming with enough energy to run a marathon.

Absent-mindedly, he noted that the soldiers hadn’t left the room but were still lingering a few feet away from Erik and Charles, watching them undress. They radiated suspicion. Not just against Erik. 

For a moment, Charles’ trembling hands forgot to fiddle with the buttons of the wet shirt sticking to his body when Erik stepped out of the spandex suit unabashedly naked, revealing a web of scars covering his tanned skin. Some were white and straight, testimonies of surgical precision - others were puckered and crooked reminders of unrestrained violence that had been exerted on his body.

The memories that Charles had plunged into earlier - just as he had plunged into the cold ocean - flashed once more through Charles’ mind. He saw himself but not himself strapped to a table. Faces covered in surgical masks were staring down at him. Screaming. Blood. Bodies, bodies, bodies. Hunger. Snow. Smoke. Sirens. Shouting. An endless crusade.

Erik raised an eyebrow at Charles and he averted his eyes. The rustle of clothes told him that his new acquaintance was getting dressed with the same military efficiency he had undressed with while Charles was trying his best to remember how to undo a button.

His fingers were trembling. From the cold, surely.

* * *

“His name is _not_ Max Eisenhardt,” Moira said. Her arms were crossed behind her desk, “His name is Erik Lehnsherr.”

Charles made an effort to look surprised.

“The CIA has been keeping tabs on him for quite a while now.”

“Have you?” Not successfully, it seemed, considering how long it had taken them to recognise who they were dealing with.

“He is wanted in 6 countries.”

“ _Six?_ ” He no longer needed to make an effort to fake his astonishment. It seemed that insignificant details such as international law did not concern Erik enough for Charles to have caught up on this when he had first dived into his mind back in Miami.

“Murder, theft, arson, abduction, blackmail-”

“Who are the victims?” Charles asked, knowing the answer very well.

“War criminals, for the most part. Nazis. And everyone who aided them. – bombings, poisonings, torture – in fact, he almost skinned one of our very own agents with a paperclip once.”

“Involved in _Operation Paperclip_ by any chance?” Charles asked. His mouth felt uncomfortably dry at the thought of Erik’s morbid poetry. The tightening of the corners around Moira’s mouth told him that she felt the same. Paired with much less optimism into the goodness Charles could sense in Erik, hidden underneath all these layers of pain and anger.

“The first time he appeared on our radar, he was based in the Soviet Union. His _loyalties-_ ”

“His loyalties?”

“Several of his victims reappeared in the hands of the Soviets – we assume he handed them over in exchange for information.”

“He is not a communist…” As far as Charles knew. He actually didn’t know for sure.

“He is also a known homosexual.”

For over a decade, Charles had trained his face not to react when such matters were brought up. Every muscle in his body knew better than to twitch. Maybe his mouth felt slightly drier than usual. Maybe he forgot to breathe just for the smallest of moments or blinked a few times too many.

“I don’t see how that quite lives up to the international terrorism you listed before.”

“Personally, I could hardly care less. But some of the men feel...uncomfortable working with him and that won’t make it any easier for me to convince the CIA that this entire…project is worth time and expenses.”

“They feel uncomfortable working with _any_ of us. You should hear the vile things they are calling Angel and my sister. Not to mention the horrible- things they say to Armando which are utterly un-”

“And I made them aware of the consequences they will suffer if I am witness to such conduct. I will not accept unprofessional behaviour from anyone on my team. And that counts for your friend Lehnsherr as well. One more stunt like the one he pulled in Russia, and he will find himself in a cell - we have enough to hold him there for the rest of his life, however long that may be for one of you- … a mutant. Have I made myself clear?”

“Crystal clear.”

“Excellent. Now go and tell Lehnsherr not to start World War Three on my watch.”

* * *

At the age of sixteen, Charles took up his studies of Genetics and Biology at Oxford and passed every exam with flying colours, antagonising teachers, friends and rivals alike with his grasp on any subject he encountered.

When he was nineteen, his first lover was dispelled for homosexual acts. Charles watched as Christian’s name was drawn through the social mud until he was pressured to seek medical treatment to avoid trial. It was the man’s own sister who had found the letters and shown them to their father.

Whose letters they were, Charles never found out. A former lover’s, maybe. Or maybe they had been Charles’ own writing. His own involvement with Christian had been whisked aside by the invisible but powerful hand of his last name.

And Charles had drawn his conclusions. He had learnt his lesson. He had learnt to keep that part of himself that saw and yearned and _wanted_ a secret. He had learnt not to let his eyes linger, not to let his thoughts dwell and not to let any traitorous words escape his mouth.

Twelve years later, the threat of nuclear war was looming large and Charles’ head dropped back into the pillows of the king-sized bed in the master bedroom of his old mansion. He was a trembling, boneless puddle.

Erik pressed a kiss to the inside of his thigh and Charles could feel the wetness of his own come as well as saliva and the soft prickle of Erik's evening stubble brush against his sensitive skin. Erik was beautiful like this and Charles enjoyed every fraction of every second he had to observe him before-

“I’m going to take a shower,” Erik announced with the harsh, ruthless routine of a clockwork, already sitting up, but Charles wrapped a leg around his back to keep him in place.

“Stay,” Charles said and let his eyes trail down Erik’s body, “Let me return the favour.”

The same thing he said every night after Erik entered his room without knocking, made Charles’ higher brain functions short-circuit with quite frankly unearthly acts of fellatio – and then departed with the same determined step that he had marched in with. To emphasise his intentions, Charles let his fingers run through Erik’s short hair suggestively - but the Erik was already pushing himself up and off the bed, heading for the adjoining bathroom.

“Another time."

It had been the same again and again, almost every night since they had started doing this.

* * *

In his life, Charles had learnt to hide many things. His telepathy, his unnatural tendencies, the way he flinched at sudden movements or loud noises when he encountered his brother at any public event and was forced to sit by his side.

But there was no hiding with Erik. None of the secrets - none of the lies - were necessary with him. Or possible. Charles was the telepath among the two of them but Erik had an uncanny ability to see right through any façade and any falsehood. Maybe that was why he bothered so rarely with pretence himself. Or maybe the man just had nothing to lose.

Erik was a mutant. A queer Jewish mutant who had spent most of his years on Earth as a fugitive. Hunted. Alone. Risking his life.

If Charles couldn’t confide in him - then who _could_ he confide in?

And yet, in all their discussions of the future, of politics, science, logic, philosophy, religion, literature, humankind, mutantkind, music, art, dreams - the words that were burning on Charles’ tongue, demanding to be spat out, never crossed his lips. He could hardly form them in the privacy of his own mind.

He had forgotten how to reach out to another person - or maybe he had never truly known. His family certainly hadn’t been the sharing type.

It was Erik who addressed the subject that Moira had mentioned weeks ago.

In a night in late August, they found themselves staring at a single bed in a single room - the last available room in the hotel, the last hotel for another 65 miles, or so had the woman at the reception assured them repeatedly.

“If you want me to sleep on the floor, you only have to say so. Or in the car.” Erik didn’t even look up from the map he was consulting to plan tomorrow’s route.

Charles put down his suitcase on a nearby chair.

“Why?”

Erik shrugged. “I’ve spent a lot of time sleeping rough in my life. I don’t mind it.” 

“I meant…there is a perfectly good bed in here.”

Still looking at the map.

Charles thought he could gauge some hesitation radiating from his mind.

“Men _usually_ feel uncomfortable bunking with a queer.”

Iron claws dug into Charles’ back, a thousand nails ran across his skin and drew cold sweat. The time had come to address The Issue.

“You can have the bed,” Charles said through the ice slowly filling his lungs.

This time Erik looked up at him, one eyebrow raised. “That is generous of you. But I insist.”

“Or we could both...stay. And share.”

Two long-fingered hands began folding the map, smoothing out the wrinkles with thumbs. Charles always thought that Erik had an artist’s hands. A sculptor’s maybe. He could work wonders with metal. A creative outlet might even help with his temper, Charles mused.

Or maybe a musician. He wondered if Erik played the piano.

“...share?”

Charles forced his eyes away from those hands.

“Yes.” Right. “I would happily share the bed with you.” He swallowed. “And anything else you might feel...inclined to share. In fact. I’d love that.”

Erik smiled at something Charles might have understood if had felt confident enough to intrude upon his mind just now. “Then let’s _share_ , Charles.”

Charles didn’t meet his gaze. Instead, he pretended to be busy removing his tweed jacket and hanging it over the back a chair by the window.

As long as he didn’t look, he could freely admit to himself that Erik looked rather handsome in those darned turtlenecks.

He should have felt...relief. The same relief as Erik had felt when he realised that he was not the only mutant in the world. Instead...his mind was racing.

They played chess.

They drank cognac.

And eventually, Erik stood up from his chair and sat down on the bed.

He was sitting right next to Charles.

One of his calloused (long-boned) hands cupped Charles’ cheek and tilted his face up to meet his own as he leant forward and brushed his lips against Charles’. Their first kiss was more tender than Charles would have expected from such a hardened man but for one moment there was so much warmth in Erik’s usually so driven mind that it was difficult to reconcile it with his usual harshness. Charles could still taste a faint trace of liquor on him.

Erik’s lips parted and allowed Charles’ tongue to slip between the row of his teeth. As their kiss deepened, one of Erik’s hands moved towards the buttons of Charles’ shirt, slowly undoing them one by one.

When his hand reached for the buckle of Charles' belt, Charles became vividly aware of the throbbing hardness that had formed between his legs and was tenting his trousers.

Warm hands pushed Charles’ shirt off his shoulders, leaving his quickly rising and falling chest open for Erik to inspect. And inspect he did, for a long, silent moment. His hands brushed over the smooth expanse of skin and caressed it so softly as if Charles would break if he prodded him too hard. Charles wanted nothing more than to take a brief look into his mind, just to put a name to that strange, unworldly emotion written into his gaze. But he knew that Erik's irritation at any unwanted intrusions of his mind would break him out of whatever mood had come over him. Finally, one flat palm moved to the centre of his chest and pushed Charles back onto the bed. His breath hitched when Erik settled between his legs, and Charles’ raised his hips to help Erik push his trousers over his arse and down to his knees.

Glancing down at Charles laid bare beneath him, Erik licked his lips, baring a glimpse of his sharp teeth as he did. He was mesmerising, Charles thought, a combination of dangerous and beautiful only a predator could attain and utterly aware of it. With a small smirk, blink and you'll miss it, one of his hands wrapped around Charles’ throbbing cock and pushed back his foreskin.

Charles clenched his teeth to silence his appreciative hiss at the pressure around his cock.

“Don’t,” Erik said, as he knelt between Charles’ legs. “I need to hear your voice when I do this.”

“I can't-” His words faded into a moan when Erik leant down and swallowed the length of his cock in a single gulp. Charles didn’t need his powers to sense his amusement at Charles’ moan and the undignified twitch of his knees against Erik’s chest – it was visible in the grey eyes staring up at him, gauging his reactions.

Erik set an even rhythm, unrestrained in his display of vulgarity as his lips eagerly moved up and down Charles’ cock.

Years ago, Charles had taught himself to hide, to conceal, to reign himself in every second of every day - now he had to remember how it felt _not_ to. To focus entirely on Erik, on the man doing this for _him_ , to give _him_ pleasure. On his breath against Charles’s skin, on the warmth of his body moving against Charles’ and the suction that sealed his mouth around Charles’ cock. He had to focus to keep himself from searching the windows for spying eyes and his mind from wondering what the hotel staff assumed, whispered, talked about…

The warmth around his length disappeared and Charles winced at the sudden cold around his wet member.

“You are thinking,” Erik accused. His lips were flushed red.

“I tend to do that.”

“Not now. You’re with me now.”

He was with Erik. He was ‘with him’ in a way that he was not when they played chess or when they discussed politics and he watched Erik’s hands dance and gesture when he argued a particularly controversial point. Not even when he watched Erik replace a tire in nothing but a tight, black shirt.

Charles sputtered a helpless moan when Erik took him into his mouth again with the same ease as before. Against his conscious will, his hips thrusted up into the heat of Erik’s throat - but before he could apologise – verbally or otherwise – Erik sent a mental signal of Approval and swallowed him deeper than he had before (than anyone ever had before). Charles could feel the muscles of his throat shuddering around the intrusion as Erik paused for a brief moment to adjust to the girth of Charles’ cock in his throat and to work through the weak protests of his gag reflex. When he began sucking him again, he did so with the same enthusiasm as before. It was a feeling unlike any Charles had felt before when he had received oral sex and the mere willpower it required not to thrust up and chase this new sensation was enough to turn him into a twitching, moaning caricature of what used to be a world-renowned professor.

He tried to muster up the necessary concentration to worry about whether it was painful for Erik to take so much of him, but when his hands began to circle and rub the skin behind his scrotum, Charles’ brain gladly abandoned all concern for the world around him.

The bed, the room, Erik – it all transformed into flashes of heat and pleasure and sweat clinging to exposed skin.

“I’m going to-” Charles started but he forgot mid-sentence what he had been about to- “come...I’m going to…”

He expected Erik to let go of him - but instead, he took Charles in as deep as he could, swallowing his release with a mental hum of pleasure while Charles rode out the static waves of his orgasm.

He could feel Erik chuckle around him as he slowly released his flaccid cock and set to clean it with slow, lazy drags of his tongue. “Thanks for sharing, indeed.”

“that was…you are. You are-”

“I am what _,_ Charles? I think I’ve earned an adjective here.”

With as little elegance as his sluggish body granted him in this state, Charles reached for the front of Erik’s turtleneck, tugging at him until he – reproachfully – let go of Charles’ cock and moved up to make himself comfortable by Charles’ side.

“I can’t think of an adjective right now but… maybe there is another way to show you - just how much I enjoyed it?”

Charles let one of his hands trail down Erik’s side with a clear destination -

A pang of …fear? … flashed through Erik’s mind. A moment of panicked static buzzing across the surface of his mind. The duvet rustled when Erik buried his fingers into the fabric.

“No. I’d rather not.”

Charles blinked but removed his hand immediately. ‘No’ only had one meaning.

“Did I do something wrong?”

“Of course not.”

The temptation to peek into his mind was almost unbearable - if only to understand the forest of barbed wire that suddenly seemed to wrap around Erik’s mind.

“Erik…”

“I need to take a shower.”

* * *

Four weeks later in a motel near Austin, Texas, Charles' teeth were buried into the back of his hand, stifling noises of need threatening to slip past his lips.

A tug at the wristband of his watch forced his hand down – away from his mouth and into the short hair of the man whose tongue was currently circling the rim of his foreskin before he carefully moved it back with his hand, unsheathing Charles cock. Almost involuntarily, Charles' hands fisted Erik’s hair, ready to get out of this as much intimacy as he could before Erik fled the room.

* * *

“This is the first time I’ve been with a man in over ten years.”

Erik raised an eyebrow. “You have been with a man just last night.”

“You know what I mean.”

Erik used his powers to float his black rook to its destination without moving a single, physical muscle.

“I do.”

“If I’m doing anything wrong - anything at all, I’d prefer if you told me.”

He moved one of his pawns closer to one of Erik’s bishops.

“There is nothing you are doing wrong,” Erik assured him with the same even tone he had maintained through the entire conversation. In the same tone in which he had announced that he would make eggs for breakfast.

Charles saved his queen from the trap that was beginning to form around her.

“Spend the night with me,” He said. “Next time.”

Nothing about Erik’s even face studying the lay of the chessboard betrayed the racing of his mind at the question. The white queen wasn’t the only one who felt trapped.

“Charles.” He faltered. “I cannot-”

“Nothing else. Nothing you do not want. You can even have the bed if you want to. Just don’t...leave.”

Charles knew Erik’s answer before he said it.

* * *

Years of one-night stands and casual romance had taught Charles to recognise another person’s arousal hidden under almost any array of thoughts.

It was after two months of admittedly very satisfying - and very one-sided oral sex followed by swift exits on Erik’s part that Charles finally - and for the first time - perceived that particular spike of desire and need from Erik, mixed with a breathless smile and excitement which were pulsing through every piece of metal on Charles’ body.

He had never seen his friend quite so carefree before.

So Charles tried his best to please him.

He _tried_.

It couldn’t be so difficult.

He was just asking him to do one thing. A single thing…that Charles couldn’t bring himself to deliver.

“No…No I can’t, I’m sorry.”

Erik’s smile faltered. Arousal turned into disappointment when Charles lowered the gun that he had been pressing against his best friend’s temple - the object of his arousal.

“I can’t shoot anyone point blank. Let alone my friend.”

* * *

Charles was not innocent. He had gotten dressed in the dark of a strange apartment more than once in his life and slipped out of the door unnoticed. He had approached more than one woman in full awareness of the ring around her finger or the image of a lover in her mind - and exited more than one bedroom through the window when he heard heavy footsteps coming up the stairs.

He had earned more than one divorce attorney their pay check.

Now he had become the one who had to listen as bed covers were thrown back and naked feet made their way across the carpet and exited the room.

Sometimes Charles pretended to be asleep - sometimes he let his eyes follow the receding frame of the man who in turn pretended not to see him.

Maybe he was a demon, sent night after night to punish him for past transgressions.

* * *

_"Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful." – Frankenstein, Mary Shelley_

* * *

“Is it...because of your scars?”

Erik halted the movement of the martini glass (his third, Charles noted) to his mouth and tilted his head contemplatively.

“My scars?”

“If you don’t want me to see them, we can-”

“You have seen them already. On the ship.”

“If you feel uncomfortable-”

“Would you like to see them? To see more?”

Erik had a particular talent to ask questions that didn’t allow for a safe answer. He laid them out like landmines, buried amid an innocent conversation or barely visible on the surface, waiting for someone to set them off. This was one of them.

Charles opted for controlled detonation.

“I would...like to see.”

With a wave of Erik’s hand, a lamp floated from a nearby shelf onto the table between them - its arm turning to face Erik, basking him in almost white light.

“ _Then watch._ ”

Erik scooted to the front of his chair to remove his black turtleneck and undershirt in a single, efficient movement and placed them - neatly as ever - over the back of a chair. The lamp was merciless, highlighting every scar marking the expanse of his skin.

Charles watched as his friend stood up, toed off one boot after another - and finally his belt, letting his trousers slide down his legs and stepping out of them. He tried not to react when his underwear followed, taken off with the same casual indifference.

Charles’ eyes wandered to that perimeter of his body that they had avoided the last time he had seen Erik naked.

He was a scientist, Charles reminded himself. At the end of the day, genitalia were organs like any other. He knew their function and their purpose. And he could certainly appreciate the aesthetic of a particular well-shaped penis attached to a healthy adult man.

“This-” Erik pointed at his neck - “was Schmidt’s attempt at a makeshift tracheostomy. I was allergic to one of the substances they injected me with and I couldn’t breathe. He had to open up my throat. This one-” He pointed at his left collar bone - “1953. A man tried to stab me with a broken toothbrush but he missed my heart. These ones down there? I am not sure what they were for - I think Schmidt tried to cut into my bones to see whether there was any sort of magnetic substance in my bone marrow, but I passed out when the drill broke off so I don’t know if he found what he was looking for.” Erik continued, cold and mechanical, explaining each scar on his body with the same detachment as a pathologist reading out the report of an autopsy.

“They used a hot knife to test whether I could cool it down. Pressing it against my skin was an additional incentive.”

Images flashed through Charles mind.

_You can stop it, Erik. You know you can-_

Metal needles sunk into his skin. _Push against them - push them out, that’s all I’m asking today-_

A man throwing a pan of burning oil at him. Despite his attempts to push the pan away, a good amount caught his left thigh. The former SS-Sturmbannführer had looked innocent enough now, making Asado in a little apartment in Argentina, but Erik knew what he was. What he had done.

“I am not ashamed of these scars. Or uncomfortable. They remind me who I am. What I am. Why I’m doing what I’m doing.”

_I’m Frankenstein’s monster. And I’m looking for my creator._

“I don’t need anyone to tell me these are...beautiful. Or that I am beautiful despite of them or more beautiful for them or whatever anyone might think. They aren’t. I am not beautiful. And I’m not ashamed of that.”

Never taking his eyes off Erik, Charles stood up. Slowly, he walked around the table, forcing his hands to remain motionless at his sides until only a few inches separated him from Erik’s exposed skin.

There was a challenge in the way Erik looked at him.

If only he knew what Erik challenged him to do. Or not to do.

Charles reached out, his own cool fingers connecting with the warmth of Erik’s body.

His hand explored the surface of Erik’s chest, comparing the sensation of smooth, warm skin and knotted scar tissue side by side. He could feel Erik’s chest rise and fall beneath his touch. Could feel his heart racing.

“I’m ashamed,” Charles said. “Of so many things.”

“Ashamed of being a mutant? Your sister? Of being a queer? That any of your cherished colleagues at your university find out how disrupted the Xavier family life was?”

“All of that. And of other things too.” He let his hand move higher, up to Erik’s neck. “I have to say, I admire that courage of yours, my friend. Every day.”

“I’m not brave. I’m honest – with myself as well. Once you lose anything else, you can afford honesty.”

“Would you like me to be...more honest with you?”

There was a spark of ConcernAngerFear in Erik’s mind that Charles might have withheld something from him, but he could feel him push the thought aside.

“Yes.”

Charles cupped the side of Erik’s face. He could feel his stubble and the harsh edge of his jaw press against his palm.

“I think you are wrong. I think...you are the most beautiful person I know, even if you don’t want to hear it or don’t care or don’t agree. I think you _are_ brave and strong and so miraculously unbroken. And I think that - **_I know that_** I love you. I have loved you from the first time I’ve felt your mind back in Miami.”

“Charles-” Erik didn’t meet his eye.

“Even if you don’t feel the same way - I want you to be happy. You said … peace is not an option. But I’d like...I’d like to give you that option.”

An invisible force wrapped around his wristwatch and pulled his hand away from Erik’s face.

“I will leave. Maybe in a week. Or a month or in ten years. You know I will. Schmidt is out there and I’m going to kill him. And likely I will die trying - but if I don’t, there are so many more like him out there. Monsters and murderers who killed my family, my friends, my people. Tortured them and murdered them. I have these powers for a reason – I’m alive for a reason. I cannot abandon that. I cannot betray...the people who cared for me, fed me, hid me, protected me and who _died_ for me. I cannot do that. There is no peace. Not for me.”

He tried to imagine a version of Erik born into a different world. An Erik who felt free to live and love as he wanted. As he _deserved_.

“Then be with me now.” He pressed a close-lipped kiss against Erik’s lips. “Please.”

Erik rested his forehead against Charles’.

“Then I will. Tonight.”

* * *

_"I was dependent on none, and related to none. The path of my departure was free;' and there was none to lament my annihilation."_ __– Frankenstein, Mary Shelley_ _

* * *

His first time with Christian had been messy. Quick fumbling in the dark.

“It hurts…”

“It’s supposed to,” Christian said. “I think. It gets better anyway.” He hadn’t as much as looked at Charles since they entered the hotel room.

* * *

_I will leave. You know I will._

Erik had never made a secret of that, but Charles had believed, ever the optimist, that all it would take was to give him a place to stay - a perspective, for the first time in many years. A purpose beyond endless violence and bloodshed. Some love. Just like any stray. It had worked for Raven, hadn’t it?

_I have been given these powers for a reason._

There was a part of Charles that was still hoping that if he gave Erik the things he had lost- a home, a family, a cause - he might be able to convince him to stay.

But the noise of an invisible clock had begun to tick in the back of his mind when Erik lead him back to his bed and they removed each other's clothes with eager curiosity. There was nothing new revealed to either of them - after all they had seen each other naked that first night on the ship - but Charles could read that he wasn't the only relishing in their working in unison to do undress each other.

“Have you done this before?” Charles asked as they sunk down on the bed in a tangle of limbs, sensations and feelings. “With another man?”

Erik nodded. “Don’t worry.”

Trapped between their naked bodies, Charles’ cock twitched with interest now that he was finally free to roam his hands over every part of Erik’s body.

“Do you have slick?” Erik asked.

“There’s lotion in the nightstand.”

The drawer opened with a wave of Erik’s hand and he retrieved the little jar Charles had brought with him all the way from Oxford for more… private occasions. (Charles tried not to think of how many nights he had spent with his cock in his hand, imagining Erik in bed with him.)

He watched as Erik stretched out on his back, diagonally across the bed, and bent his knees to place his feet flat on the mattress as he opened the jar -

“Oh.”

Erik raised an eyebrow at him. “What?”

“I just didn’t think you would want to…you know….”

“Feel you inside me?” He licked his lips. “I’d love that.”

The thought of being buried deep inside Erik - being as close to him as he could be to another person –

Charles swallowed.

“May I…” He nodded in the direction of the jar in Erik’s hand.

Erik seemed to hesitate for a moment but then held it out for him to take.

“Don’t be too gentle.”

He could hear Erik take a deep, steadying breath as he watched Charles gather a dollop of the lotion onto the tip of two of his fingers and settle between his legs.

Charles frowned when he found Erik’s cock as limp and uninterested as he had been when he has first taken off his clothes for Charles to inspect his scars. He ran his hand experimentally over its veined length - but a hand wrapped around his wrist to stop him.

“Focus.”

“But you aren’t-”

Erik pushed his hand down towards his entrance.

“ _I told you not to be gentle._ ”

Charles rolled his eyes. “Forgive my courtesy then,”

Circling Erik’s rim with his thumb, he gauged his lover’s face for any reactions, but even when Erik sighed and spread his legs a little farther apart to give Charles better access, his cock and his mind both remained uninterested. Well, not _uninterested_. Erik followed Charles’ ministrations rather intently and when he let one of his hands wander up Erik’s side, he leant into Charles’ touch like a cat yearning for contact. But Erik was not aroused. No aspect of his thoughts was particularly...sexual, even when Charles pushed two fingers into his body, exploring the warm, foreign tightness of his body. Charles imagined that same tightness around his cock-

“Do you want me to go on?”

“ _Yes_.” For emphasis, Erik pushed himself down on Charles’ fingers - so hard it had to be painful - and for once there was a flash of something feverish and predatory in his mind. “Just don’t pretend I’m a virgin on her wedding night, Charles.”

Charles remembered Erik’s excitement when he had asked Charles to shoot him.

Of course.

He liked it rough then. That one did not exactly come as a surprise. Rough he could do.

He pushed a third finger into the heat of Erik’s body, scissoring them against the tight, rippling rings of muscle - before withdrawing his hand completely.

Erik huffed, clearly dismayed.

“None of that,” Charles demanded and bit what would be a punitive hickey tomorrow into the expanse of Erik’s flat stomach. “Be good.”

Clearly, a small bite next to his belly button didn’t hold up to the excitement of having a gun held up into your face, but if the sharp-edged smile tugging at the corners of Erik’s mouth was anything to go by, Charles was on to something.

He made sure to add just the slightest bit of teeth when he kissed his way up Erik’s chest, scraping his nails across his left nipple and pressing a close-mouthed kiss to the other man’s lips.

In response, a pair of muscular legs wrapped around Charles’ midsection, pulling him in closer and Charles found his erection pressed against Erik’s lack of one. Maybe it was something physical. No shame in that, Charles decided, but maybe better not addressed mid-foreplay.

He lifted Erik’s legs a bit higher to line himself up with his entrance before pushing into the quivering tightness of his body with a single deep thrust.

A spark of pleasure-pain sprang from Erik’s mind to Charles’ as he began to move against the grip of the muscles clenching around his cock. Usually, he would give his partner time to adjust - especially with as little preparation as he had given Erik - but since he was already pushing back up against Charles, urging him to fuck him in earnest, Charles delivered.

He pushed in and out in strong, languid thrusts, in and out of the body underneath him, trying his best to hit Erik’s prostate with the strokes of his cock.

When Charles leaned down for a kiss, he couldn’t say whether Erik threw his head back in pleasure or whether he bared his throat in an almost primal gesture of trust and surrender - but he could see the artery in his neck pulsing against his skin and an equally primitive sense of possessiveness overcame Charles. He licked across the steady rhythm of his heart hammering away in Erik's throat and the scar stretching over his neck. He hadn’t lied or exaggerated when he had called Erik beautiful. He was a living work of art, a brilliant, otherworldly creature that Charles couldn’t have begun to imagine existed when his life had still consisted of lectures and thesis and grading papers.

With one hand, he cupped the back of Erik’s head, lifting it up into a kiss that his lover eagerly returned.

He would leave. Maybe in a day, maybe in a few months, maybe in ten years – that’s what Erik had said with that baffling honesty he had and so Charles kissed him as if it was their last kiss and fucked him as if it would be their last fuck, desperately and vigorously.

There was still no hardness pressing back against his groin, even as Charles’ own orgasm approached - but Erik seemed to be riding out something entirely different and inherently less sexual. Charles could sense the vibrant dance of electric signals dancing from synapse to synapse inside Erik’s brain, he could feel the trembling of his muscles as he wrapped his arms around Charles, clinging to him as if his life depended on it.

Charles clenched his jaws together when the pleasure broke its path - vaguely remembering the other residents of the Mansion and what they might hear, what they might think, what they might do - but suddenly he could feel Erik’s nails bury into his back - rougher than Charles had ever been with him.

_I want to hear you._

For the life of him, Charles couldn’t say whether Erik had spoken or thought these words at him - he could only feel the pleasure radiating from Erik’s insatiable mind. It seemed he was getting something out of this as well, whatever it was.

_I need to hear your voice when I do this._

“But they-”

_I need you. Be with me._

For a single, brave moment, they were the only two people in the world - so tightly connected they might even be one, inseparable in flesh and mind -

And then everything collapsed in on itself and Charles found himself spread out across Erik’s heaving chest, his own release coating the man’s insides.

“That was…” At a loss for words, Charles let his forehead drop into the crook of Erik’s neck, “utterly amazing. You are...beyond description.”

He wanted to pull out his softening member - but Erik’s legs around him didn’t release him from their entanglement.

“Not yet.”

Charles conceded. Sprawling himself over his lover’s body felt easier now anyway. More sensible, really.

“What about you?” He mumbled into the sweat covering Erik’s skin. “Was it. Good for you? Too rough?”

There was a beat of silence in which confusion and anxious amusement battled in Erik’s mind.

“You think it was rough?”

“I tried. Maybe I should have asked-”

He could feel the vibrations in Erik’s chest when the man chuckled underneath him.

“You weren’t rough. A few bites isn’t rough.”

“I was going slow on you.”

“After I told you not to.”

* * *

_"'Enter,' said De Lacy; 'and I will try in what manner I can relieve your wants; but, unfortunately, my children are from home, and, as I am blind, I am afraid I shall find it difficult to procure food for you.'_

_"'Do not trouble yourself, my kind host, I have food; it is warmth and rest only that I need."_ __– Frankenstein, Mary Shelley__

* * *

“May I ask you something?”

Erik nodded his acquiescence.

“You never seem to…” He lowered his eyes to the junction of Erik’s legs in delicate implication, but Erik raised his brows in a challenge. Another landmine.

“Seem to what?”

“I’ve never seen you erect. I wondered whether it is something...I do. Or fail to do.”

“I already said, there is nothing you are doing wrong.”

“That is not saying I am doing it right.”

Erik took a deep, thoughtful breath.

“I told you - never be too gentle.”

His slender hands removed one of Charles’ rooks and put the black queen in its former place.

“So you aren’t interested unless someone gets hurt?”

Charles placed a pawn in the path of Erik’s bishop. A bait, to throw him off his strategy.

“Unless _I_ get hurt. Never have been,” He said, his attention seemingly entirely captivated by the chessboard in front of him. A stolen glance into his mind revealed that he paid little attention to Charles’ pawn. It didn’t affect his planned strategy. “I don’t mind it, really.”

Of course, Charles had experimented with that kind of play before. One of his lovers had enjoyed being called vile names - another had liked to be restrained and blindfolded. She had even asked him to slap her one time.

It was just…

...Erik didn’t seem the ideal person to play such games with. As traitorous as it felt to entertain such thoughts while the man himself was sitting in front of him, seemingly perfectly composed, sipping at his martini, Erik was unstable. Self-destructive. Irritable. Had mood swings. Charles had observed many of the same patterns of thought in veterans and other survivors of violent tragedies. If he was using sex as a form of self-harm, Charles had to ask himself whether it was right to become the tool he did it with. But then, Erik was an adult man - one who wouldn’t take kindly to Charles making decisions for him, telepathic abilities or not. One who had never hesitated to indulge Charles.

“Tell me about it then. Tell me what you would like me to do to you.”

“I don’t want you to do anything ‘to’ me. I don’t want you to do something you don’t like.”

“Try me.”

Erik smirked suggestively, a memory of Charles’ cock down his throat flashing through his mind that was clearly intended for Charles to see. “I thought I already had.”

Charles ignored him. (His body was less successful).

“I was with a girl once - she asked me to slap her.”

Erik replaced one of Charles’ rooks with a knight of his own before leaning back in his seat. The rook was still floating around his hand in lazy circles.

“Would you like that? To hit me?”

“Trust me. I frequently have to resist the urge.”

The insufferable smirked widened.

“So you would like me to punish me then when I’m being rude again? To Moira and the kids? When I disagree with you?”

When he was reckless. When he casually waved that darned gun around mid-conversation. When he spoke of murdering people while making a salad. When he was grinning like this.

“We were talking about what _you_ liked.”

The rook landed in Erik’s waiting palm.

“I like pain,” He said in the same even tone he would use to describe the weather. Maybe a tad more confrontational but then Erik was always confrontational and might as well be when he talked about the weather. "The more the better, really. Knives...whips. Chains. I want to forget my own name. I want to scream. I want to feel you as intensely and intimately as I can and I want to feel you for days to come. But none of that at the price of corrupting you or what we have. I know it's twisted. And I won’t force that on you.”

Charles swallowed.

“We could make it work. I know we could.”

Erik tilted his head, clearly bemused. “Think it through, Charles, before you make promises.”

“You asked me to be honest with you. And being honest with you I have to say that I don’t want to hurt you. I never want to hurt anyone and least of all you, my friend, but you trust me. If someone does these things to you, I want it to be me.”

“Control then,” Erik remarked, “It makes sense, I think.”

“What does?”

“It seems befitting of your mutation that control and trust would appeal more to you than the mere… physical aspects.”

Charles wanted to argue, but he couldn’t. The thought of Erik at his mercy - trusting him with his body and his mind - shouldn’t have been as appealing as it was. Nothing he had tried and toyed with in bed lived up to the mere notion of having all the strength, all the power contained in that body before him, readily bending to his will.

But then, if he had, the last thing he would want to cause Erik was pain.

He wanted him to feel. home. at peace. To open his eyes.

“If you really want to try this-”

“I do.”

“-come to my room tonight.”

Charles lost two games in a row that night - maybe it had to do with the heat burning underneath the skin or tremor in his hands or his valiant battle against the urge to catch a glimpse of Erik’s thoughts. Or maybe it was Erik, learning to adapt to Charles’ strategies rather than trying to control the field with his own at any cost.

* * *

At 10:48 pm, Alex left his bedroom and walked down the hallway to visit Sean for some communal cannabis consumption.

At 11:34 pm, Hank returned from his makeshift laboratory in the basement, walked past the door of Charles’ bedroom with his mind buzzing with thoughts on mitosis and DNA replication and returned to his bedroom. His thoughts moved on from DNA to Raven’s DNA specifically. Then he stopped thinking about DNA altogether and thought of Raven. Of light catching her golden hair and of her smooth skin. And her smile. That her smile was just as beautiful when she was blue as when she looked normal and pretty _but it shouldn’t be_. Should it?

Charles tuned out.

At 0:03 am, Raven returned from the gym. Through the wall, he could hear her draw a bath.

At 0:15, Moira put down her book and shut off the light.

At 0:45, only two people in the house were still awake. One of them was Charles, who was currently trying to decide whether a cardigan would be appropriate to wear to this...occasion. (He decided it wasn't.)

The other was Erik - whose mind was so far away, that Charles had to focus to make out more than his mere presence in the house. The children and - more reluctantly - Moira had set up camp in the northern wing of the house with Charles and Raven. Back when several generations of the Xavier family had still lived in this mansion, the unmarried daughters had lived on this hallway - the rooms were spacious and their windows permitted a view across the premises behind the mansion. Erik was the only one who hadn’t taken up quarters here. Instead, he had picked one of the smaller guest rooms in the southern wing, far off from the others and the room with the best view of the front gate and the main driveway.

At 0:47 am, Charles slid out of his room and headed downstairs. He remembered sneaking out as a child and the feeling of thick carpets underneath the naked soles of his feet and the noise of the grandfather clock on the second floor whose ticking felt unbearably loud in the secrecy of the night. He had done it many times then. To avoid his brother. To explore his stepfather’s laboratory. To check if his mother was still breathing. 

(Consensually) torturing his lover was a new one.

Entering the southern wing, he reached out with a tendril of his powers, just to be sure that Erik hadn’t gone to bed since Charles had gotten up - but the storm cloud of furious thoughts that was Erik’s mind was still wide awake and brightened briefly when his ferromagnetic senses identified Charles by the metal in his clothes and belt. The invitation stood.

A few metres down the hallway the lock of the door - which Erik always kept strictly locked, regardless of whether he currently was _in_ the room or _out_ of it - clicked open.

Now, there was no going back anymore.

Charles took a last, steadying breath before turning the doorknob and entering.

The first thing he saw, of course, was Erik sitting by the window with a book in his lap that he had definitely not been reading when Charles had glanced into his mind earlier. It was a bit of a relief that he was not the only one pretending to be more sure of himself right not than he really was.

Erik was barefoot, Charles noted.

The second thing that drew his attention was a row of neatly arranged devices, lined up on a red towel spread over the desk to his left. He could feel Erik’s eyes and mind on him as he studied them, gauging him for a reaction.

Charles closed the door behind him and stepped closer. The lock clicked shut with a wave of Erik’s hand.

“You came,” Erik stated, putting the book on the table next to him.

“You thought I wouldn’t?”

Erik looked at him, slightly tilting his head.

“I was not sure.”

With that, he stood up from his chair by the window and joined Charles who was still examining the devices spread out on the desk. Some of them were straight-forward in their application - with others he couldn’t begin to imagine how they could possibly be used on the human body for pleasure or for pain.

“What do you want me to do with this?” Charles asked, picking up a knife the size of his arm.

A smile widened on Erik’s face - the same smile Charles had seen there when he had leant into the gun Charles had held to his head. “I want you to do whatever you like with it.”

Charles turned the knife in his fingers - and found Erik’s mind almost hypnotised by the metal moving in even circles, accepting the warmth of Charles’ hand and the dance of his fingers against the material.

“What about that?” Charles asked and indicated a small metal device in the middle of the row - a small sphere covered in pins and attached to a handle.

“A Wartenberg wheel,” Erik said, “It stimulates nerve endings. Not one of my favourites.”

“Then why put it there?”

“In case you like it. Dealer’s choice.”

Charles placed the knife back on the table and let his hands slide over the other devices spread out before him. Beside him, Erik forced himself to keep his breath even as he watched - and felt - Charles’ hand brush over the devices in front of him. Most of them were at least partly made of metal and Charles noted with amusement that Erik, who barely felt any arousal during their previous sexual encounters, was now mentally and physically squirming beside Charles as he watched him pick up and turn one item or the other. There was nervousness too, in the turmoil of Erik’s endlessly churning mind. There was more laid out on this table than a collection of slightly disturbing sex toys – it was a part of Erik too. A vulnerable one at that.

Charles deliberately picked up a riding crop from the end of the row and turned it in his hands - he wondered whether there was a particular order these things were lined up in. Somehow he doubted that Erik had left any of this to coincidence.

“Do you need instructions for that one too?”

Charles turned around to him and - with a smugness he hadn’t expected from himself - placed the tip of the riding crop underneath Erik’s chin, lifting it up to force his head back.

“You seemed rather excited at the prospect of me punishing you, earlier…” Charles said, adding that particular low pitch to his voice that had respectively been described as “husky”, “a blade wrapped in velvet” and “bloody hot” by former lovers. "Maybe that's what I should do."

Erik smirked at him. He had that particular ability to smirk while barely moving the rest of his face at all - this smirk, of which he had plenty in him, consisted of the small contraction of the muscles in his jaw and a mocking glint he added to the usual glower of his eyes.

“Please _do_.”

Charles lightly snapped the crop against Erik’s cheek, but the smack, light as it was, didn’t even elicit a flinch. Erik did however suspiciously shift his weight from one foot to the other.

“Please, I’d like you to take off your clothes,” Charles said, making sure to leave less than a foot of distance between them.

 _‘Please?_ ’ Erik mouthed at him, mockingly.

Charles snapped the crop against his face again, still lightly but a little bit harder this time.

“ _Chop chop, Erik_.”

Erik raised an authority-undermining eyebrow at him, but followed his last order without much ado, pulling his turtleneck over his head in a single, swift movement. Usually, Charles would at least have permitted himself a little smile at the tousled hair that Erik usually kept so neatly slicked back. Instead, he entertained himself with a sharp smack of the riding crop against the back of the chair that Erik was placing his top over, missing his fingers by only a few inches.

“Give me that, please,” Charles said.

Dutifully - if still amused - Erik held his shirt out for Charles to take.

“If I had known that you would enjoy that thing so much, I would have gotten you your own riding crop ages ago,” Erik said. “In fact, I think I have a spare somewhere.”

“Trousers next, Erik,” Charles continued coolly, “And you are only making this worse for yourself with your obstinate behaviour.”

“I do hope so. Did they make you play polo?”

Charles snapped the crop against his leg.

“Your trousers, Erik,” He commanded with the tone of a teacher who was trying to get the attention of one particularly disruptive student. It was a tone that Charles had had many opportunities to practice. He might have taken Erik’s obstinate behaviour a little more personal if he hadn’t felt the arousal radiate off of him in throbbing waves of mental agitation.

He watched silently as Erik unbuckled his belt and slid both his trousers and his pants over his knees and down his legs and finally stepped out of them, his muscles dancing and rippling underneath his skin as he shifted his weight. Only a few weeks ago, Charles would have tried to look elsewhere and to think of anything but the barely concealed strength in Erik’s body or the dangerous grace written in all his motions. Now it had become impossible to look at anything _but_ Erik.

“You’re very beautiful, my friend.”

Erik handed him his discarded trousers. “Don’t ruin this for me.”

“I mean it, you’re a very handsome man, Erik,” Charles said, running the tip of the riding crop up his thigh, watching his taut skin dip slightly under the pressure until it came to rest just below his hip bone. “I want you to go over to the bed and down on your knees on the floor right next to it, please.”

Erik looked up at him - and Charles expected him to laugh and to reject the proposition - on your knees? where had that come from? Erik would never-

“You know, Charles, you don’t have to say ‘please’,” Erik said, “I’d actually prefer if I was the one who ended up doing the begging around here.”

“You can start saying ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ any day you like, Erik, manners go a long way.”

He dragged the tip of the crop a few inches to the left until it came to rest right over the root of Erik’s penis.

“Go, and kneel. _Please_. With your back to me.”

He half-expected Erik to resist; to tempt him into inflicting the pain he craved. Maybe Erik didn’t like pain, Charles mused, maybe he just enjoyed rebelling against a person of authority.

But without almost any hesitation - so little, that it took a telepath to notice it - Erik turned away from him and walked towards the bed, his pace even and measured, allowing Charles a few moments to truly appreciate the golden light dance across his sculpted body.

Finally, in a single, elegant motion, Erik dropped to his knees, his hands resting in his lap. Charles could feel his own cock twitch with interest - not only at the appealing image that Erik’s ramrod straight back offered, but also his display of-

Of what exactly? There was nothing particularly submissive about Erik. He seemed confident as ever, even on his knees and Charles wouldn’t have liked to see him in any other state. Maybe there was really something about control…

Charles took his time, dropping Erik’s clothes on the floor one item at a time - he could see the man twitch in irritation when he heard the heavy sound of his trousers landing on the carpet. Since he had known him, Erik had always made sure to keep his clothes orderly and nearby if went to bed or to take a shower. Always ready for a quick exit.

Charles dropped his shirt next to the desk.

“What now, Charles?” Erik asked, “What do you have in mind?”

“It’s very simple,” he answered and turned towards the other objects spread over the desk and placed the crop beside it while he studied the others. “You will get the hang of it.”

He picked up a tawse among his collection. He had heard of them of course, during his time in Britain, but he had never seen one himself. Much less held one.

Charles picked it up, experimentally, and hit the two ends against the palm of his hand - but even the light slap made him wince.

Had to be excruciating, if swung with full force. But then, Erik was a masochist by own admission - and had for years now continually exposed his body to the fall-out of his one-man crusade against the rest of the world. There was nothing surprising about his high pain tolerance. In fact, that might be the answer to his enthusiasm for this kind of play. Maybe one day his brain had had enough of agony and decided to find pleasure in pain rather than waiting for the rare opportunity when Erik might indulge one of the more pleasant aspects of life.

A glance assured him that Erik was still keeping his back turned towards him, but his mind had already picked up on the metal pieces he himself must have worked into the belts of the tawse in Charles’ hands.

Without prompting, Erik telepathically assured him of his trust and consent.

Charles had never felt the thrill of forcing his will on another person that many other people seemed to enjoy so much. Maybe he had spent too much time in his life brushing elbows with people who would betray anything and buy anyone to move a little further up in life to find any appeal in subjugating others. Or maybe it was his mutation - for him, absolute control over another person was little more than reaching out with his powers and bending their will. It would be an underhanded trick, no victory or conquest.

But he didn’t have to force Erik.

Erik had submitted of his own free will because Charles had won his trust and loyalty. He was trusting Charles not only with his body but with an entire level of intimacy that Charles had never shared with anyone before him. He had laid a part of his soul bare for Charles. Faced with the trust Erik had placed in him, an entirely new sensation was dancing underneath his skin and in the pit of his stomach. He had desired many people in his life, but now he realised they had all just been single steps on his path to this man.

“Charles?”

He could see Erik’s shoulders tense a little when Charles approached him.

“I would like to play a little game with you, Erik.”

He couldn’t see Erik’s smile - if it physically crossed his face at all - but his mind lit up with excitement.

“What kind of game?”

Charles brought down the tawse on Erik’s back with a light swing rather than full force and the two leather tails of the whip wrapped around his shoulders in two distinct snaps. If he was a little tentative, he excused that with his lack of experience. Didn’t go around whipping people every day, after all.

Erik didn’t even flinch, but pleasure lit up in his mind like smouldering ashes.

“Now,” Charles said, running his hand through Erik’s hair as if petting an obedient dog, “I want you to tell me exactly what you did to deserve this.”

He hadn’t had any particular ‘misdeed’ in mind, but it was interesting to see Erik’s mind flicker from one of his previous attempts to provoke Charles to the next. He could follow his thoughts as he ruled out any more serious ‘misdemeanours’ because after all, Charles had hardly struck him with any force behind it, as far as Erik was concerned.

“Is it because I took your last beer earlier?”

“No, I didn’t know that was you. I suspected Alex, to be honest.”

Erik’s mind lit up.

“Well, sounds as if you have to punish me for that as well.”

“Later, maybe. For now, I would like to hear an apology, Erik. For not telling me what you liked the first time I asked.”

“I can tell why you became a teacher,” Erik said and this time Charles could hear the smile in his voice.

“ _Erik_.” (Charles wondered if he could bring him to call him professor in bed. After all, Charles decided, if he was indulging Erik's kinks, he could at least hope for some reciprocation, right?)

“I apologise, Charles,” Erik said and Charles wondered whether he’d find him more or less attractive if he had actually made an effort to sound sincere, “Please forgive me.”

“For now. Because you’re making such an effort to improve yourself tonight.”

Erik tilted his head back and closed his eyes and somehow managed to remind Charles of a big cat, a predator, stretching out across a rock in the savannah to enjoy the sunlight. 

"I _always_ aim to be the best I can be."

Despite Erik's sarcasm, it was harder, bringing the tawse down a second time. The first time, he had been almost gentle and he had administered it in full confidence that it wouldn’t cause Erik any serious discomfort.

Every person Charles had been in contact with for a certain time had intrusive thoughts once in a while. It seemed no one was a stranger to that appel du vide - a destructive thought that appeared in particular situations in otherwise sound minds. A person looking down from the roof of a high building might suddenly battle a morbid impulse to jump. A person driving a car at a fast speed might suddenly find themselves musing that they could easily turn the steering wheel around and drive into the oncoming traffic despite having no actual intention of doing so. Even the kindest person in the world might see their friend in a vulnerable state and contemplate their own ability to hurt that person even if they had no actual desire to follow through with such a horrible act.

There was no clear answer why the human mind procured such thoughts in certain situations, but the impulse that stopped them was the same that now stilled his hand when he raised the tawse a second time.

He had to remind himself that just this time, hurting another person was the objective and that the thought of causing another person pain was not a product of a particularly morbid notion born from a part of his brain playing a trick on him. The barrier between thought and action almost seemed physically palatable and Charles had to force his arm to move; had to force himself to bring down the tawse with much greater force this time.

The sharp cracks in their quick succession made Charles wince - both at the sound and at the two white lines the leather had imprinted on Erik’s back which were quickly turning red as blood returned to the small veins underneath the skin. The moan that Erik released from the depth of his lungs, however, was distinctly one of pleasure, not of pain. At his sides, Erik was stretching and curling his fingers. In his mind, Charles could see him battle the temptation to wrap his hands around another part of his anatomy which was currently beginning to fill with blood.

“Now, what do you think that was for?”

Erik hummed thoughtfully and made sure to think ‘loud’ enough for Charles to see him consider giving a wrong, mocking answer just to vex him.

“Calling you ‘bourgeoisie’ this morning?”

Right. Had already forgotten about that one. All he had asked of Erik was to hand him a spoon. (“I’m sorry, I didn’t know they had removed it after from your mouth you were born.”)

“Exactly.”

He brought the split-ended leather belt down again- and again, each hit marking one of Erik’s acts of impertinence. It ceased to be difficult after the fifth and began to feel pleasurable after the tenth.

The web of red lines across Erik’s muscular back became tighter with each confession, but the only reaction remained a hiss then or a sharp intake of breath now.

It didn’t help that Erik looked beautiful like this. Erik had just admitted to threatening one of the CIA’s doctors out of conducting a standard medical examination on him when they had first pulled him from the water (not that Charles could sense any actual regret of any of the things Erik accepted the punishment for) when one streak of the slicked back hair escaped his strict hairstyle and fell into his forehead and Charles wanted nothing more than to lovingly brush it back into place. Fix it, fix him.

He brought the tawse down on his lower back only to keep himself from reaching out.

By now, a fine sheet of sweat had begun to form all over Erik’s body and the lamps were bathing the sharp angles and sculpted muscles of his body in golden light. With each strike, a new, broken sound broke past his lips and Charles was sure that he would only find peace after he had elicited them all and cherished their unique sounds. The welts on his back stood out bright and red and in some places, his skin almost seemed stretched paper-thin over the blood gathering right underneath the surface.

By the nineteenth, Erik was squirming and soft, almost-sobs and whimpers accompanied each breath he took. Charles might have taken pity on him if the mantra of _don’tstopdon’tyoudarestopdon’tstopdon’tyoustop_ hadn’t been as tangible in Erik’s mind as his arousal. Charles knew if he told Erik to turn around, he would see the hardness of his cock pressing against his stomach, full and straining. He was trembling with furious desire (to be fair, almost everything about Erik was furious in one way or another) and at some point, he had clamped his right hand around the base of cock to keep himself from coming. It was almost hurtful that a sound whipping had brought him closer to orgasm than Charles’ cock buried to the hilt in his arse.

He stepped closer, the tawse wrapped around his wrist, and cupped Erik’s chin into his palm, tilting back his head until it rested against his own hip. It was only when with Erik's face so close to him, that Charles noticed his own arousal. Even if he wasn’t as hard as Erik, his erection was still forming a visible bulge in the front of his trousers and Erik wasn’t helping matters - not with the soft little noises he produced seemingly without noticing it nor with the way he rubbed his back against the front of Charles’ leg to aggravate his welted back further. And not with the way he looked up to Charles, his mouth slightly ajar and his eyes glazed over as if he had a fever.

His hair was sticking to his forehead, clammy with sweat.

“The last one, Erik. Twenty. What is this one for?”

“You didn’t deliver yet,” Erik reminded him without hesitation, eager to get the pain he was due for.

“First I'd like to hear what's missing, please. What else do you need to be punished for."

The corner of Erik's mouth twitched. What little of his sarcastic grin he still had the wits to flash at Charles was belied by the heaving of his breath, in and out.

"Many, many things, Charles."

"I know, Erik, and we have so much time to correct those too, but there is one I'm waiting for right now."

Finally, he gave in to temptation and brushed the wayward strand of hair out of Erik's face and then, encouraged by a low growl, caressed the side of Erik's face with his palm.

"What else, my dear?"

Erik leant into the hand petting him, much like a cat (not a domestic cat, of course, there was nothing domesticated about Erik) and even caressed Charles' fingers with his lips.

“Tell me what I did, Charles,” He purred, kissing and licking eagerly at the tips of Charles’ fingers. “Tell me.”

Looking down from over Erik’s shoulder, Charles could see his hands kneading the top of his thighs to distract himself from touching his own erection while his back was moving against the front of Charles’ leg to find some friction against the smarting welts.

“How are you supposed to learn if I tell you the answer, hm?”

Erik made a miserable sound and sucked one of Charles’ fingers into his mouth. With his steel-grey eyes meeting Charles’, he ran his tongue along the underside of his index finger as he had done with his cock dozens of times before. Charles’ member twitched in empathic support even as Erik pulled back his lips for the fraction of a moment, revealing the two rows of brilliant sharp teeth as a last warning before sinking them into Charles’ finger.

“For this?”

“Bloody-”

It was hardly more than a nib and the surprise was far stronger than the brief moment of pain, but Charles still pulled his hand back from the trap that was Erik’s mouth (which contained far too many teeth to be safe for hands to be near or in it anyway) and – to his own surprise – slapped Erik across the face with the back of his hand.

Charles felt the knuckles of his hand connect with the hard structure of Erik’s cheekbone and the surprise and arousal that erupted in Erik’s mind mingled with Charles’ own moment of concern. Before he could reassure himself that he had not overstepped any boundaries, Erik turned around, still on his knees, and eagerly nosed the hardness of Charles’ cock through the front of his trousers. He had been tricked, Charles realised, Erik had just tricked him into delivering the pain he was searching for.

Briefly, Charles considered abandoning the mission he was on and to treat himself to another blissful orgasm in the depth of Erik’s throat, but since his audience seemed to have so little objection to his last improvisation, he decided to stay on track.

He fisted Erik’s dishevelled hair, wrenching his head back at a painful angle.

Erik almost looked pleading, his trembling lips mouthing something Charles couldn’t make out if it was English at all.

“You remember when you made me hold a gun to your head, Erik?” Charles reminded him. Erik sighed happily, his mind lighting up at what he seemed to consider a fond, playful memory of a carefree afternoon. “You asked me to pull the trigger.”

Erik hummed, visibly content.

“I was worried about you,” Charles said, mindful to add a slight snarl to his voice, “I thought you were self-destructive.”

A smug smile spread over Erik’s face. “What about any of this make you think I’m _not_?”

“You did it because you get off on it. You did it because you enjoy it.”

In retaliation for the bite earlier, Charles yanked Erik’s hair back once more before releasing his grip, eliciting another happily pained sigh.

Erik immediately leant forward again, but before his mouth could find the erection tenting Charles’ trousers again, Charles delivered the promised last strike –

With as much strength as he could muster from this angle, he snapped the tawse down Erik’s front in a diagonal line. There was little dignity to Erik’s surprised whelp as he flinched away from the unexpected pain while simultaneously shuddering with delight. Charles could watch the red line that began to form on the front of his chest turn into hot-cold electricity in Erik’s mind.

“Next time you have an idea like that - you will ask me, do you understand?”

Erik nodded, humming feverishly.

“I asked if you understand.”

He wasn’t entirely sure that Erik was still capable of words with his mind almost seeming to burst with sensation and arousal, but he managed to nod at least. “Yes. Yes, I’m sorry.”

“Good.”

He dropped the tawse to the floor, as carelessly as he had cast Erik's clothes aside earlier, and he could sense his eyes follow its descent, visibly dismayed to see it leave Charles’ hand – but his attention immediately snapped back up, watching expectantly as Charles unbuckled his belt. At that, another image flashed through Erik’s mind; an image of that same belt connecting with his skin with a painfully loud crack, leaving a red mark in its wake.

 _‘Another time_ ,’ Charles thought at him and warm excitement at that prospect shuddered through Erik’s mindscape.

Charles made a show of unbuttoning his situationally inappropriate cardigan and placing it over the back of a nearby chair. He might not be as well-versed in the art of sadism as Erik might have liked, but he didn’t miss Erik’s dismayed glance towards his own clothes lying carelessly discarded on the floor.

“Fetch us some lubricant and open yourself up for me, please,” Charles ordered without sparing Erik so much as a look. “And because you were so good about your punishment, you can pick one of your toys, too.”

Erik lacked some of his usual grace as he stood up, but Charles couldn’t quite tell if it was the physical strain that made his rug-burnt knees buckle under his weight or his excitement at the idea of more abuse from Charles’ hand.

While Erik was weighing his options, Charles removed his clothes and placed them - neatly folded - on a chair, elevated over Erik's clothes which he had left strewn all over the floor.

Once naked, Charles settled down on Erik’s bed and watched him pick up a small metal jar and a pair of manacles, fully covered in metal spikes that reminded him of these vicious choking collars used to control aggressive dogs - although these cuffs had clearly been designed with human anatomy in mind.

Erik's tangible pride when he handed Charles what was, without doubt, another spawn of his own morbid ingenuity made him wonder whether he expected words of praise for his pick. If he did, he wouldn't receive them. An experimental tug proved that it worked indeed much like the dog collars it resembled, drawing tight right around any limb that put a strain on the chain.

"Get yourself ready," Charles ordered. He did his best to sound as if he expected obedience while in truth, he was surprised every time Erik did as he said.

But he did, surprising Charles again.

He could feel Erik’s eyes on his hands, watching him play with the chain cuffs as he knelt at the end of the bed and unscrewed the jar with his powers. Erik gathered just enough oil from the jar to cover his fingers with while the jar and its lead were reunited by an invisible hand and floated over to the nightstand next to the bed. Whatever lubricant it was, it smelled faintly of herbs, Charles noted. Quite pleasing actually.

Aware of Erik’s fascination with Charles’ hands twisting and turning the metal chains of the manacles in his hand, he made a show for him of twisting them and gently stroking his fingers along the spikes. They weren’t sharp enough to draw blood or cut through his skin, but pulling against them in the throes of pleasure would indubitably be painful. Which was rather the point, Charles conceded.

With his eyes focussed on Charles’ hands and the image of a similar contraption wrapped around his own neck in mind, Erik plunged two fingers into his body. He opened himself up for Charles with little regard for his own comfort - which was, again, the point. Charles ignored his impulse to reach out and prepare Erik _himself_ , but he was captivating enough to watch as it was. Erik was always captivating to watch, regardless of whether he was cooking or reading or ranting about politics -

But watching him finger himself mercilessly with three fingers up his entrance and his lip caught between his teeth was an image unmatched by any statue of the old Greek masters. It was poetry in motion and Charles knew better than to interfere with art. When he found the right angle, Charles could trace the twitch move through his body like an ocean wave, from his thigh muscles up his abdomen and to his shoulders when his head rolled back. Even the watch around Charles' wrist rattled in tune with Erik’s pleasure.

"I think you're _loose_ enough," Charles said and patted the mattress beside him, "Come here, _please_."

With a single, disappointed sigh, Erik withdrew his hand and arranged himself where Charles had indicated, pain-pleasure humming through his heated mind when the welts on his back rubbed against the fabric of the duvet.

“Put your hands up there,” Charles instructed. “ _Please_.”

He’d be damned if he didn’t manage to ruin the word ‘please’ for Erik for the rest of his life.

Without further protest or any mocking comment, Erik raised his hands above his head and held on to the wooden headboard there, the chiselled muscles of his biceps wonderfully on display.

Charles looped the spiked manacles around the headboard and attached them to Erik’s wrists, shortening the chain just enough to keep Erik’s hands suspended in the air a few inches above the mattress. Erik gave the chain a few forceful tugs and then seemed to rule them adequately uncomfortable for his liking.

“How is that?” Charles asked and tried to lend his voice some of that mocking edge that came so naturally to Erik, “You like that?”

“It’s a start.”

‘A start.’ Pff. He would have to remember this the next time he got an opportunity to whip some sense into Erik.

He grabbed a fistful of dishevelled hair and wrenched Erik's head back to give himself full access to his mouth. He kissed him forcefully, with more than enough teeth to remind him exactly who was in charge tonight.

It was a strange path that had led him here, Charles thought as he shifted to kneel between Erik’s legs, but one he found hard to regret while leaning over a Greek god tied to his bed.

Reaching between Erik’s legs, he ran the tip of his thumb around his entrance and was satisfied to find the ring of muscles readily yielding under his touch, almost sucking him deeper inside when he pushed in.

Erik was watching him, his mouth still open and his lips flushed from their previous kiss. He made a wanton sight like that, Charles thought, with his lips kissed raw, his hair dishevelled and his hands squirming in their restraints. Charles kept his gaze locked on this vivid image of debauchery while pushing into him and committed his reaction – the slight arch of his torso, the fluttering of his eyelids, the sharp intake of breath paired with a hiss – straight to memory. For just a brief moment in time, Erik was his.

Grabbing his hips, Charles arranged his body to meet his thrusts as he began to move, angling his lower body up to take the entirety of Charles’ length. Erik pushed back against him, fucking himself on Charles’ cock as well as this angle allowed while he was unable to brace himself against the mattress. The chain around his wrists rattled with each of Charles’ thrusts that pushed him back down into the mattress.

“I should keep you chained up like this all the time,” Charles mused while running one hand along Erik’s side, enjoying the rhythmic contractions of the muscles underneath his skin. “I like you desperate.”

Erik muttered something in German - likely about how he _wasn’t_ desperate.

He was beautiful, Charles thought. Lying underneath him, trembling and vulnerable, there was a strange lightness about his mind, a momentary reprieve from the demons that tormented him in his every waking (and many a sleeping) hour. Even in his calmest moments, Erik always seemed restless, like a tiger pacing up and down a cage, the bars of which only he could see. But for now, his mind was blissfully carefree and it made his face looked younger than Charles had ever seen it, unguarded and expressive. For once, the constant tension had bled from his frame, the unnatural alertness and stiffness of a predator - leaving him exposed and trustful under Charles’ hands. It made sense, Charles mused, that he needed this. Every person - and as much as he tried to be a monster, Erik was very much a man - needed some respite once in a while. Like the body needs food and the brain needs rest, every heart needs a place of safety once in a while, a moment of vulnerability in the presence of trust.

From his first plunge into Erik’s mind on, Charles had known that he wanted to give this man some semblance of peace and hope if he could. He had known that he was in love with Erik Lehnsherr since that morning when he had returned to the CIA for no other reason but that Charles had asked him to stay.

_What do you know about me?_

_Everything._

Hah.

In truth, he had only scratched at the surface then and he was barely breaching it now.

It was this moment when Charles realised that he would spend the rest of his life discovering the man he had caught a thousand glimpses of but never seen in full.

There was a specific element of abstraction to moments of absolute physicality, Charles mused as he peppered a trail of light bites and nibbles up Erik’s chest, stopping at a particularly deep scar underneath his left pectoralis major to kiss it. There was so much falsity, pretence, and distance to any verbal conversation that could never invade the raw, primitive honesty of physical intimacy.

“ _Charles_ …” His name was barely louder than any of the soft sighs and moans Erik released in increasing frequency but Charles still noticed how hoarse he sounded. “I need…”

Whatever it was he needed was cut off by a voiceless whimper when Charles thrusted into him in just the right angle to make his mind white out and his arms twitch against the chains wrapped around his wrist. “Please…”

Charles bit down on his left nipple. “Please what?”

The only answer was a frustrated yank at the chains which rattled the wooden headboard.

He almost expected Erik to slip out of the metal chains and to reach out himself and to take what he wanted, what he _needed_ \- but whether it was out of self-discipline or the pain-pressure of Charles’ teeth around his nipple that contained him, the chain remained in place with Erik’s hands straining against it.

“Use your words, dear.”

“ _Dear_?” Erik all but snarled and Charles grinned at him.

“Yes, _dear_?”

Whatever scathing reply Erik usually so verbally gifted mind was currently composing was cut off by his brief cry when Charles pushed his hands underneath Erik’s hips to change the angle of his thrusts.

“I need to-” He trailed off again.

Charles wrapped his hand around Erik’s sensitive cock, his light squeeze eliciting a full body shudder from Erik. “What do you need, Erik?”

“Let me come,” Erik said. He tried to thrust into the hand around his cock to find friction but Charles used his weight on top of him to pin him down.

“Then you should ask nicely,” Charles recommended, “I told you. Manners go a long way.”

Charles could feel his own climax approaching, but he’d be damned if he couldn’t hold out the obvious desperation etched into the lines of Erik’s face.

“Please,” Erik said. “ _Let me.._.” The instinct to touch himself to find release made his hands twitch but they were immediately intercepted by the chain around his wrists, resulting in a brief, frustrated struggle against the metal chain. But the rebellion remained pointless.

Trying his best to look smug - and succeeding judging by Erik’s look of frustration - Charles tightened his grip around Erik’s length, cutting off his urethra to keep his orgasm at bay.

“I’m sure you can form a full sentence.”

Erik glared at him, but there was little of his usual fire behind it.

“You said you _wanted_ to beg,” Charles reminded him.

Some dismay crossed Erik’s mind - with a distinctive note of _“not for that”_ \- but he didn’t seem displeased enough to voice his protests.

“Please. Let me come. Charles,” He said, trying to sound mockingly matter-of-factly. But he couldn’t quite keep the desperation out of his voice and that was the humiliation Charles had hoped for.

He kissed his forehead. “ _That’s better._ ”

He loosened his grip around Erik’s member, just enough to give him friction without preventing ejaculation, and coupled it with a particularly deep thrust into him.

Erik threw his head back onto the pillow, exposing the trembling column of his throat and opened his mouth while remaining completely silent as he came.

During his life, Charles had felt many different minds in many different states. He was familiar with emotions that no language he was familiar with had words for. One thing he had learnt over the course of his sexual career was that anyone’s orgasm was an individual experience unique to one person. The thoughts and feelings in the moment climax were as diverse as its physical sensation - only Charles had the privilege of feeling each one.

Erik’s orgasm was an explosion of hot pleasure that shot up his spine and cleared his mind of every thought while several spurts of warm, white come burst from the tip of his cock into Charles’ hand, slowly dripping down onto his stomach. Charles could partake in the sensation of weightlessness and clarity Erik was experiencing as his world crumbled away into an undefined state of almost-existence.

Small metal objects were rattling around the room, the lights flickered and the lock of the cupboard by the door were clicking lightly when Erik’s power reached out for them just like his fingers clung firmly to the cuffs around his wrists and his toes curled into the covers he was lying on. Even as his eyes threatened to flutter shut, Charles could sense his effort to keep them locked on Charles.

He almost looked peaceful like that. He had to fuck him senseless more often.

Charles could feel his own climax building up with each thrust into the rippling tightness around his cock that was now trembling with post-coital sensitivity. What pushed him over the edge was the breathless, broken sigh of relief Erik made as the white-hot clarity of his orgasm drifted off into the warm, golden afterglow. Charles found his climax deep inside Erik’s body, his release coating his insides. For a moment, the world was bliss and everything from Erik’s hot breath against his sweat-drenched shoulder to his jutting hip-bones pressing into Charles’ side were the softest, most pleasurable things he ever felt.

With his hands buried in mattress beside them and the side of his face pressed against Erik’s, he rode out his climax and what felt like his last remnants of energy with it.

Once the rush passed and left his mind in a fog of warmth and contentment, he sank down on the bed, his body half-covering Erik’s. Once again, Erik had reduced him to a boneless, satisfied heap of flesh held together only by a sack of sweaty skin. The only muscle in his body that seemed to be working was his heart which was still beating out a rapid tattoo.

A neatly packaged thought of Warmth-Affection-Acceptance was pushed towards him from Erik’s mind. It was impressive how quickly he had picked up on how Charles’ powers worked and had started to emulate their patterns to invite him into his mind, to share thoughts - or pull up walls when Charles wasn’t welcome.

In response, he let some of his own love for Erik shine back.

They were endless few seconds as they lay entangled and caught their breath. 

Then he glanced up at the chain still tethering Erik’s arms to the headboard.

“Aren’t you going to take those off?”

A lazy shrug.

“It’s not too bad.”

“I don’t want to see your hands turn blue.”

There was no doubt in Erik’s mind that his concern was unwarranted, but with a simple flick of his power, the loops around his wrists snapped open and his arms dropped back onto the mattress above his head.

“ _Better_?” Always with the sarcasm.

“Yes. Thank you.”

There was no blood, Charles noted to his relief as he watched Erik inspect his wrists, visibly satisfied with the imprints the chains had left. They would leave bruises, no doubt, which was bad enough. Everything that had happened tonight was a moral conundrum as it was. He didn’t need to add having shed his lover’s blood to the list of reasons why this latest choice of adult entertainment was full of pitfalls. But right now, he didn’t have it in him to think rationally of that. Right now, he was spent and tired and wanted nothing but to curl up to the warm body beside him and bask in his own afterglow and Erik’s glow of Satisfaction until he dozed off.

But he couldn’t. Because he was responsible for this now.

“Do you need anything?” He asked.

Erik raised an eyebrow at him.

“ _Need_ anything?”

“For your back or...arms?” It was awkward, no doubt. But then, as far as he knew, there was no universally recognised etiquette for these types of situations. “Your blood-sugar levels will likely-”

“It’s just pain, Charles,” Erik interrupted. “I’m fine.”

He might have continued his line of questioning or at least recommended keeping a piece of chocolate - maybe not chocolate, Erik didn’t eat chocolate and who could blame him – near him just in case he might feel hungry, but there was something else lingering in Erik’s mind. A question that would remain happily unasked if Charles interrupted now.

Finally-

“Will you stay?” Erik wasn’t looking at him when he asked. It seemed the ceiling held much greater interest at the moment than Charles’ face.

“Are you asking me to spend the night?”

“I don’t need you,” Erik said firmly. Usually, he was a better liar. “But you always seem so eager to.”

Charles tried not to smile and not to shake his head and failed on both attempts.

He could have pressed of course. He could have tried to make Erik admit to his longing for comfort - physical and emotional - that was now laid bare like an open, gaping sore for any telepath to see. But he had no doubt that if he did, Erik would never ask him again. He would immediately try to prove how well he could spend the night without him if he did and the soft hum of his content mind was nothing Charles wanted to disperse just yet.

“Then I will gladly take you up on your kind offer.”

Any person but Erik might have said something appreciative return. Or at least a few kind words in response. They might even have said ‘thank you’ for the delightful spanking. Of course, Erik wasn’t ‘any person’ and his last words, after they had manoeuvred their exhausted bodies underneath the covers and he had extinguished the lights with a flick of his sore wrist, were an announcement: 

“I will teach you how to shoot a gun tomorrow.”

Charles sighed into the back of his neck and wrapped his hand more tightly around Erik’s waist.

“Love you, too.”

**Author's Note:**

> Wow you made all the way down here, thanks for reading! 
> 
> you can find me on tumblr: langernameohnebedeutung.tumblr.com


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